


murky waters

by Nonymos



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (of a sort), Bathing/Washing, Brooklyn Sketchbook, Came Back Different, Communication Failure, Dysphoria, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Steve Rogers: Overthinker, World War II, internalized feelings, post-azzano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9697985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonymos/pseuds/Nonymos
Summary: On their way back from Azzano, Steve tries to take care of Bucky.It shouldn't be so complicated.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Темные воды](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11607540) by [fandom_EvanstanStarbucks_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_EvanstanStarbucks_2017/pseuds/fandom_EvanstanStarbucks_2017)
  * Inspired by [Brooklyn Sketchbook](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4973974) by [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves). 



> THIS FIC IS FOR ALBY, WHO IS A WONDERFUL PERSON. 
> 
> Inspired by drawing 14 in the _Brooklyn Sketchbook_.

 

 

 

 

 

Bucky keeps stealing glances at Steve on the way back from Azzano.

Every time Steve catches him doing it, he quirks a smile, as if that could excuse the insanity of the past forty-eight hours. Bucky just stares back like he doesn’t recognize him. He holds his gun with the unthinking ease of a veteran and plows through the forest without a care for the thorns snagging on his clothes. When his gaze lands on exposed skin, Steve can feel it like burning ice, even from afar, even in the dark. It makes him shiver every time. But he smiles anyway.

Bucky doesn’t smile back.

 

*

 

 _“Cap!”_ calls Dernier, jogging through the bushes, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. _“Y a un village par là-bas.”_

Steve tenses up—a town isn’t good news for a troop of ex-POWs on the run. But Gabe Jones, who was tagging along, shakes his head. “It’s fine, there ain’t a soul left.”

All around, the men are getting ready to sleep on the forest floor, for their third night in a row. They’re all exhausted, all cold, and a lot of them are wounded in some capacity. Steve thinks for a minute, but in truth he’s already decided. An abandoned village means shelter, maybe food and clothing, only a couple of guys needed to stand guard at night. They’re far away from Azzano, close to the finish line. It’s a risk worth taking.

 

*

 

The church has already been ransacked—probably, Steve thinks privately, by other Allied forces before them. They still pick it as a base camp, because it just makes sense. It’s a big, solid building, with narrow windows and exits at both ends.

Bucky is among those who take first watch. Steve isn’t, and he knows he should sleep, but he’s wide awake and restless. All around him, the men doze off quickly under the pews; their breaths overlap in twenty different shades of silence.

Eventually, Steve gets to his feet and goes exploring.

There’s a doorway connecting the church to the presbytery. Steve has to hunch his shoulders to pass through. It leads directly into a blue-and-white tiled kitchen, with a stove, broken plates and no food.

Steve feels huge under the low ceilings. He keeps moving in the silent house, noting a collection of fragile crystal vases which somehow survived the past year, a few oil paintings, cracked and darkened. There are warmly-colored terracotta floors under his boots, even in the study, which is a mess of papers. Maybe someone was looking for something; but it’s so far removed from Steve’s concerns it might as well belong to a whole other war.

The wooden stairs whine under his weight. On the upper floor, he finds clean linens, dried lavender in an old wine bottle, and a big porcelain bathtub with clawed feet.

He stares at it for a moment, then steals back down.

 

*

 

“C’mon,” Steve says when Bucky comes back from his watch. “Got you something.”

Bucky doesn’t ask any questions, doesn't say he'd rather sleep, just follows Steve across the church and into the narrow passageway leading to the presbytery. He looks but doesn’t comment as they pass through the kitchen, then up the creaking stairs. They both duck into the tiny bathroom and Steve stands against the sink, folding his arms around his chest to give him space.

When he sees the bathtub, Bucky freezes. The clear water exhales a lazy plume of steam, rising in the moonlight.

“Did you draw me a bath?”

“Yeah, I—” Steve gestures awkwardly towards the tub. “There was coal in the stove and a well in the courtyard, I figured…”

Bucky gives him a look. Heating up gallons and gallons of water and then carrying them up a flight of old stairs—it’s backbreaking work. Steve not only did it on a whim, but obviously didn’t even break a sweat. Uneasiness pools in Steve’s gut. He hadn’t realized before how unsettling the whole thing might seem. He wanted to do something nice for Bucky, but the absurd domesticity of it stands wrong, and the Steve of old wouldn’t have been so thoughtful. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to follow through on the idea either. Clearly he’s changed in more ways than one.

He suddenly wonders if that’s the reason Bucky’s been staring at him with this burning intensity, trying to understand just who this guy really _is_ , waiting for Steve’s face to peel back and reveal what's underneath.

Steve can feel worry creasing his brow—and maybe because of it, the line of Bucky’s mouth softens. It can’t be called a smile, but he puts his rifle down and shucks off his dirty green shirt all the same.

“A _bath,”_ he repeats, sarcastic, but he's quick to undress. His dog tags slip free from the collar and fall back on his bare chest, catching the light through the window, like chips of silver. Somehow, the sight of them shocks Steve; Bucky’s a soldier now. That part of him simply didn’t exist before; he’s changed more in a year than he did in all the time Steve knew him. 

The steam rising from the bath billows around Bucky’s chest, traces his ribs and his hollow stomach like phantom fingers as he pulls down his matted trousers. He looks old—solid and profoundly male, all traces of youth peeled away like sunburnt skin. A few hairs curl on his chest, trail down his navel, grow thicker and darker just over his groin. Steve wants to sink his fingers there and grab hold.

He grabs the sink behind him instead, leans back and looks at Bucky’s bare ass, paler than the rest of him even in the silver moonlight. It opens just _so_ when Bucky dips a leg in the bathtub, steadying himself with his left hand, sinews tensing under the skin of his forearm. There are scratches all over his calves, glaring an angry red like writings in a foreign language. The muscles in his back tense and relax in rippling motions.

“Fuck,” Bucky breathes when he touches the surface.

He lowers himself carefully into the tub, hanging onto the slippery edges. His legs bend at the knees; his back cautiously leans again the sleek porcelain. Finally he lets go and relaxes, with another sigh, as the water closes over his body.

Steve wants to scrub the grime off him, make sure it’s all gone even under his arms and between his legs, even inside of him, wants to push his tongue in and lick deep until Bucky struggles and cries that he’s clean, he’s clean now, _please._

There’s something funny about this situation, this fancy bathtub for a filthy soldier in a ruined house, and Bucky folds his arms behind his head in a slightly off-key rendition of his teenage self, as if to say, _ain’t that a sight?_ The smile’s there, the jaunty angle of his head too, but his body is too old and his eyes are ageless.

He sits there like nothing could be more normal, taking a bath in the middle of the night, in a stranger’s house, while your fully-clothed best pal stands there and watches. Steve suddenly feels bigger than ever. He could crack the sink he’s holding onto. Bucky knows it, saw him bend metal with his bare hands; they’re both acutely aware that if Steve decided to take what he wants right now, nothing could stop him. Nobody would hear. The sound won’t carry through the thick walls of the church.

And what he wants is horribly obvious; he’s stared too long. Worse, he’s been standing there expecting Bucky to start washing up in front of him.

That’s another thing he lost along with his old self, the instinct to hide. It’s coming back fast already—only a little too late. He’s struggling to absorb the terrible mistake he just made, the depth of what he just revealed. But despite the fact that they’re both these eerie doppelgangers of themselves, despite the miles of dark, uncharted territory between them, Bucky calmly stares back from his overly relaxed position.

“Got any soap?” he asks, tipping his chin up.

The spell is broken. Steve shakes himself. His heart is thumping. “Yeah, at your elbow. I’ll be downstairs.”

He’s painfully hard going back down the creaking steps, but he can’t do anything about it for a number of reasons. So he just stands in the darkened kitchen and closes his eyes, breathing deeply, listening to the soft sounds of the water sloshing upstairs.

Eventually, he gets his sketchbook out and draws the moment still seared on his eyelids—the exact moment when Bucky stared back in defiance of all things unspoken swelling between them. When he’s done, Steve stares at Bucky’s charcoal eyes and tries to decide what the look on his face means. But it’s impossible. He can’t tell if Bucky trusted him to still be Steve Rogers underneath the envelope, or if he just didn’t care what happened.

A noise makes him look up; Bucky’s coming back down the stairs, his steps too pointedly carefree. He’s put his filthy clothing back on.

"I’d ask if you wanna go, but the water’s brown.”

Steve mutely shakes his head, then pushes away from the table. They make their way back towards the church. Bucky’s bringing up the rear, like he’s watching Steve’s six, or maybe like he doesn’t want to have his back to him.

Right before passing through, Steve stops. He can’t leave things like this. He has to say _something._

“Buck,” he says over his shoulder, “I…”

He doesn’t know what he should lead with. For the first time in his life, he has no idea what Bucky’s thinking, what he wants to hear, what he truly felt back in that fogged-up bathroom.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” is what comes out of his mouth.

Bucky squeezes his shoulder in answer. On the surface, they’re still the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
